Literary Non-Fiction Nominations & Vote • March 2018

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Help us select what the MR Literary Club will read in March 2018!


The category for this month is:

Non-Fiction


Detailed nominating and voting guidelines can be found here. Simply put, nominations are open for four days and each person may nominate up to two literary selections which will go automatically to the vote. Voting then opens for four days and each person votes by post, receives a number of votes equal to the number of nominations minus one and may give each nomination up to two votes. Any questions, feel free to ask.

We hope that you will read the selection with the club and join in the discussion.

The floor is now open!

*

Nominations are now closed. Voting is closed. Final results-

• The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
  Post / Goodreads / 327 Pages / Votes- 1
  
  
• The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell
  Post / Goodreads / 509 Pages / Votes- 0

[sun surfer]

I'll start with The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. Here is an opinion by Robert McCrum for The Guardian on why it's one of the best nonfiction books.

Goodreads / 327 pages

In 1933 the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana -the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, it not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures.
In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. When Paul Fussell "rediscovered" The Road to Oxiana in his recent book Abroad, he whetted the appetite of a whole new generation of readers. In his new introduction, written especially for this volume, Fussell writes: "Reading the book is like stumbling into a modern museum of literary kinds presided over by a benign if eccentric curator. Here armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs and notices, official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical and archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays and disasters), and--the triumph of the book--at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions and musical scoring."

[ekbell]

Looking for the book I found I'd grabbed the book and then promptly forgot about it!

The Road to Oxiana is public domain for those living in countries with life+70 or less (the author died in 1941) and can be found at https://fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20161131.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I nominate The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell published 2 years after Charlotte's death. I think it has an interesting place in history as a biographical study. I am inspired to read it because one of my friends who grew up in Yorkshire highly recommended the BBC series To Walk Invisible The Brontë Sisters. Here's the US link about the series on PBS Masterpiece. Also I watched a travel show recently that visited Haworth village.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/...ronte-sisters/

From Goodreads:

'Wild, strong hearts, and powerful minds, were hidden under an enforced propriety and regularity of demeanour'

Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of her close friend Charlotte Brontë was published in 1857 to immediate popular acclaim, and remains the most significant study of the enigmatic author who gave Jane Eyre the subtitle 'An Autobiography'. It recounts Charlotte Brontë's life from her isolated childhood, through her years as a writer who had 'foreseen the single life' for herself, to her marriage at thirty-eight and death less than a year later. The resulting work--the first full-length biography of a woman novelist by a woman novelist--explored the nature of Charlotte's genius and almost single-handedly created the Brontë myth.

'It will stand in the first rank, of Biographies, till the end of time'--Patrick Brontë

'A classic in its own right, still read today as one of the great works of Victorian literature'--Lucasta Miller

[sun surfer]

Nominations are closed and voting is now open!

Voting will close exactly four days from this post.

Each person has ONE vote to use.

[sun surfer]

We're off to Oxiana or Yorkshire. With only one vote, I'll use it on The Road to Oxiana.

I'm happy to read either though as the Brontës have written a couple of my favourite books and while I know a little bit about their lives, it would be interesting to really delve into Charlotte's, and I have yet to read any Gaskell, fiction or non-fiction. Bookworm_Girl, I've had To Walk Invisible on my Amazon Prime Video Watchlist for awhile now but haven't got to it yet.

Originally Posted by ekbell

Looking for the book I found I'd grabbed the book and then promptly forgot about it!

The Road to Oxiana is public domain for those living in countries with life+70 or less (the author died in 1941) and can be found at https://fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20161131.

Thanks ekbell!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Both excellent choices! I can't decide!

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Both excellent choices! I can't decide!

I feel the same way.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Both excellent choices! I can't decide!

Originally Posted by bfisher

I feel the same way.

A little less than a day left to vote if that helps anyone decide.

[Bookworm_Girl]

The pressure! I decided to read both! And I still can't decide! I'm ok with whatever so was just watching if anyone else voices a preference.

[sun surfer]

Voting is now closed and the winner is The Road to Oxiana! I'll have the discussion thread up soon.

[Bookworm_Girl]

I already started reading it.

I did not expect it to start on holiday in Venice!

[fantasyfan]

The book sounds very interesting and I look forward to reading it.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I already started reading it.

I did not expect it to start on holiday in Venice!

Nobody expects the Venice vacation

[sun surfer]

The discussion thread is up!

Originally Posted by bfisher

Nobody expects the Venice vacation

I suppose it's better than starting in the Spanish Inquisition.